Life as Pilgrimage: A View from Celtic Spirituality

By David Moffett-Moore

How deep are the roots of pilgrimage in Christianity? Can we find new meaning and balance in modern life by following the path of pilgrims of ancient times?

In true Celtic fashion, Rev. Dr. David Moffett-Moore views life as a celebration to be shared and a pilgrimage to be explored, tracing his roots to the O'Mordha clan of ancient Ireland and the McQueen's and MacLean's of the Scottish highlands.

In Life as Pilgrimage, Dr. Moffett-Moore offers us the image of pilgrimage as a basis for spiritual health. Using the Peregrine falcon as an archetype for pilgrimage, this volume explores the roots of our ancient past to discover meaning for our modern lives. Celtic pilgrimage is about the journey rather than the destination: life is a pilgrimage from the place of our birthing to the place of our rising.

This book will be an invaluable aid in finding your way in a new and more powerful spiritual journey. The second edition is expanded and revised.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Energion Publications
• Release date: May 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781938434921

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Life is a pilgrimage, from the place of our birthing to the place of our rising. So say our Celtic forebearers, making each day a holy day, each place a holy place, each person a fellow pilgrim, and all life a sacred festival. And giving us much to be thankful for.

For parents, who surround us with love and fill us with courage, saying, David, you can be anything you want to be, you can do anything you set out to do. For family, who love us no matter what, in spite of all the things that make us distinctly ourselves. For teachers, who fill our minds with ideas and our hearts with dreams, who give us opportunity to try our wings where it is safe to fail, and encourage us to try again. For friends, whose company doubles our joys and halves our sorrows. For strangers met along the way, whose accidental passings have serendipitous results. For the hurts and brokenness, the failures and sorrows, without which life would not be complete, without which the joys and successes would not be as precious. For all things, I acknowledge my gratefulness and give thanks.

For Mrs. Knote’s fourth grade class assignment, asking us to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up. My answer was not a cowboy, fireman or astronaut. I wanted to have a Ph.D. and a book published in my name. For the staff, faculty and community of Graduate Theological Foundation, that provided the means forty five years later to make the life dream of a ten year old come true.

For all the churches I’ve served over the years, communities of faith and love that held me in grace and filled me with hope, that helped me find ways to be true to myself, to continue my search, and give me opportunity to serve someone besides myself and be part of something truly big. Especially for the members of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Frankfort, Illinois, who have welcomed, supported, encouraged and accompanied me in the life of pilgrimage.

For the people and programs of Lindenwood Retreat and Conference Center, part of my life and pilgrimage these past twenty five years, where I have studied and prayed and served and led. Truly a thin place if ever there was one.

For Dick Stegner at Garrett-Evangelical, Irv Batdorf at United and Warren Adams at Earlham, all professors who stretched my thoughts and challenged me to grow while taking me as I was. Especially for Earlham College, which taught me to truly think. For Marlene Kropf, of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, who as faculty at Graduate Theological Foundation served as my Ordinarius through the dissertation process and worked with me at Lindenwood. Marlene’s grace and wisdom both taught and comforted me along the way.

For all those who have gone the way before me, those who wrote the books I have read and shared their stories, especially for all the nameless ones, those who have walked their ways in silence and kept alive a sometimes flickering flame illuminating the wonder of this world. And for the readers, who in this book now hold the baton and in their turn, pass it on to future generations who will make the pilgrimage of life, and by whose passing will make it holy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements v

Prologue 1

Flight Of The Falcon 7

Original Paradise 13

Civilization And Its Discontents 19

Self As Serf, Society As Lord 25

The Call To Pilgrimage: A Quest For Self 31

Pilgrimages of the Ancients 36

Pilgrimage East And West 40

Celtic Pilgrimage: Wandering From Birth To Rising 46

A Pilgrim People 52

To Grow in One Place 58

Holy Hospitality 64

Patrick’s Path 66

The Celtic Way to Christ 72

Companions along the Way 76

From the Earth to the Stars 80

Growing Discontent 86

From Our Ancient Past, A New Beginning 92

Life as Pilgrimage 100

Peace Pilgrim 108

Prayers for the Pilgrimage 112

The Way of the Pilgrim 118

The Flight of the Peregrine 124

Annotated Bibliography 128

Prologue

A lone falcon soars high overhead, its fleeting shadow invisible amongst the tall prairie grass, wafting in the wind. With eyes as piercing as they appear, it surveys its surroundings for some unsuspecting prey. Targeting a young pheasant in flight, the falcon begins its stoop: a steep dive sometimes in excess of 200 miles per hour. The unsuspecting pheasant never knows its own death is so near. The falcon strikes with its claw outstretched as it descends upon its prey, slashing the pheasant’s throat. After the strike, the falcon circles back, catching the now dying pheasant in its own descent, and carries it off for its feast. The entire attack lasts less than sixty seconds. It is the cycle of life: something lives and something dies and something continues to live.¹

A falcon in flight is a thing of wonder and beauty, filled with power and grace. Too often it goes unnoticed in our daily lives. Falcons were worshiped as gods by the ancient Egyptians and prized by nobility in the Middle Ages. Smaller than eagles, buzzards or vultures, they excel them all as hunters.

Peregrine comes from the Latin for pilgrim, or wanderer, a name that aptly applies to the peregrine falcon. They are birds in constant flight, known to migrate as far as 10,000 miles, farther than any other bird, living lives of constant pilgrimage, as their name implies. Pilgrims in flight, they no sooner arrive than it is time for their departure. Their lives are defined by their flight: they are pilgrims, and so long as they live, they are on pilgrimage.

Like the falcon we have named, we too are peregrines, pilgrims, travelling through the journey of our life. Like the Peregrine, we are born for the flight, for the journey. Like the Peregrine, we are born for the hunt. Our flight is the journey of our lives; our hunt is the search for meaning to our existence. We are born for this hunt, this quest, and our lives are restless without it. It is the search for our own soul, the soul of our existence. We may ignore this instinctual desire, but it is to our peril. We substitute other desires, but this unmet hunger still compels us. We can build a society that is blind to it, as a barrier against it, but our quest for meaning will find a way through.

We live in a very fast paced, outwardly focused, materially minded world that seems to be on a single minded pursuit of immediate personal physical gratification, a consumerist society that is eager, even anxious, to acquire and possess absolutely everything possible. We live in a world that has lost its soul.

Our society has grown increasingly secular and material. There is little sense of the sacred and only a limited sense of the spiritual. The only reality that is acknowledged is a physical reality. Those who do express spiritual longings typically distinguish themselves and their spirituality from institutionalized religion, of any tradition.

Yet the search for personal meaning is as much a part of human existence as is the search for the physical necessities of life. A sense of meaning and purpose is as important to our well being as is food, shelter and clothing. We have an innate, even genetic, desire to see meaning, purpose and structure in our lives and have been known to create it out of our own imagination where it does not otherwise independently exist. We ignore this inner longing not only to our peril, but to the detriment of civilization itself.

We have taken personal independence to the extreme of psychotic narcissism. Society has grown increasingly splintered and fractured, even atomized, into a cacophony of personal interest groups, each more obsessed with not allowing others to succeed than in finding their own fulfillment. It becomes more important that others lose than it is that we win. We have turned wants to needs and luxuries to necessities, and in our greed not realized that there is never enough if our hearts are empty. We have turned perseverance into impatience and created road rage and in our greed, forced bankruptcies. Not only is there a deterioration of civilization, there is a loss of civility.

Yet the humans who have gone before us have acknowledged a non-physical element to our life that is just as essential for our well-being as are food, shelter and clothing. Late in his career, Sigmund Freud was asked in an interview what was necessary for human emotional health. His answer was, Love and work.² A sense of purpose and a sense of caring. Physicians and psychologists have long agreed on the individuals need to love and to be loved. This is true physically as well as emotionally; our immune system is stronger if we are in caring relationships with others. Neither a sense of caring nor a sense of purpose are physical manifestations; neither are tangible entities. Yet both are essential for our long term health.

We need to find a way out, or perhaps remember a way in, a way to rediscover our own personal soul and together, our collective soul.

In the ancient world, primitive humans and society experienced awe and wonder in their everyday lives; they felt the presence of mystery around them and within. They held life as a sacred event and the world as a beautiful gift. It was a thing to be enjoyed rather than consumed, to be in relationship with rather than to be possessed. Among the ancients, the Celtic Christians especially preserved this ancient wisdom and found a way to mingle it with their newfound Christian faith, thus creating a special expression for their spiritual experience of life, a metamorphosis of the ancient and the modern, a unique approach to living in their time and place, that has a message that can help us in our own time and place.

The Celtic Christians believed and experienced life as a holy festival, meant to be enjoyed fully, cherished lovingly and shared generously. They knew life to be a pilgrimage. Not a pilgrimage according to Roman or Western tradition, nor Eastern nor modern secular versions, all of which view pilgrimage as a journey focused on the destination. For these traditions, the point is to reach the destination, after which the pilgrimage is over. Celtic pilgrimage is about the journey, not the destination. Life is a journey from the place of our birthing to the place of our rising.³ Our goal is not to reach the destination as quickly and easily as possible, but rather to enjoy the journey, to experience the fullness of our traveling along the way. Life is about the journey, and our meaning is found in experiencing fully the opportunities that lie before us along the way. If life is a pilgrimage, then our lives are meant to stay on the way, for when our pilgrimage ends we are no longer pilgrims.

The purpose of this book is to invite the reader to live a more aware life, a life lived more fully in the present moment, a life that is more fully conscious of itself and of its surroundings, and therefore may truly be enjoyed because it is more fully known and experienced. This life is described as part of the primitive experience and part of the human experience. It is expressed most fully within the Celtic tradition.

Human spirituality is about the sense of meaning and purpose in one’s life and about the awareness of the experience of life. This is the meaning of human consciousness, the essence of who we are. It is a sense of being in relationship, with one’s self, with others, both human and with all of life, and with the ultimate other, the whole of life, the one we call God. Human spirituality is to experience life as holy and a gift to be loved rather than a thing to be used.

The quest of the pilgrimage has been a part of every civilization as an expression of our longing for that which is more, that which is beyond us. The Celtic Christians made this a part of their daily lives and we can learn this approach from them. The symbol for this sense of life as a pilgrimage is found in the bird that bears the name, the Peregrine falcon, the Pilgrim.

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1 Madeline Dunfy, The Peregrine’s Journey. (Millbrook).

2 Attributed to Sigmund Freud on a variety of web sites, including http://www.cybernation.com/victory/quotations/directory.html, and http://www.quotationsbook.com/.

3 Phillip J. Newell, One Foot